NTS is the worst ae release in a while

  On 9/22/2018 at 11:18 PM, coax said:

 

it will sound overly harsh but yes, I think NTS lacks the depth and the compositional quality that earlier ae had.

There are several problems, including lack of sound quality, good compositions, good climaxes, a lot of cheesy ambient,

and no single track I can point to as a 'blockbuster' track that I want to go back to and listen to a lot.

 

No track has the mindmelting puzzling difficulty of earlier ae. I find that every track sounds exactly how I imagined they

would after taking a break since the first listen. On Elseq and previous releases many tracks didn't make sense until several listens.

This 'difficulty' is gone on NTS. Osla for N, feed1, latentcall and os veix3 all are much better in all dimensions than any nts track,

just to pick random examples. I listen to NTS now and there is almost nothing.

 

Four of seven, clustro casual and ninefly are the single most interesting tracks to me, as they are original-ish for ae and relatively fresh.

column thirteen, glos ceramic and tt1pd all have the the signs of blockbuster tracks but the two latter are too straightforward without a payoff, which makes column thirteen one of the top tracks on there.

This 'straightforwardness' is a big problem to me. feed1 and latentcall are relatively 'straightforward' but they have a much better composition. those elseq tracks also have traces of all the previous ae tracks that have this form like irlite, osla for n, ilanders, tankakern, parhelic triangle, uviol etv, with a good 'payoff' and composition that makes me want to relisten a lot. nts has none of this.

This is the most accessible ae release since the mid 90s I would argue and it suffers from it.

 

Regarding the 'cheesy ambient' bit, the tracks are pretty, but they feel a bit derivative and almost like they don't belong. this includes 'all end', even though bladelores is cool. they don't have anything new to offer i think and as such are a slog to get through.

The cavernous ambience of quaristice and the weird gamey/baroque/wahetevr ambience of oversteps is way more interesting.

 

last part is just the sound quality itself. it has a softer more "synth patch"-esque sound, and not the more complex sound of elseq/etc.

I don't know exactly how to explain it other than each sound sounds thinner and less full.

 

so overall, and I'm very open to my mind changing on this, but I'm not sure it will, nts to me is a kind of unfinished jam that doesn't work in the same way as earlier stuff.

i love ae but i just had to write it, they are my #1 and I don't want to sound so harsh :P

  On 9/27/2018 at 8:45 PM, mcbpete said:

NTS is the Twin Peaks Season 3 of Autechre.

  On 9/28/2018 at 7:23 PM, EXTRASUPER81 said:

 

  On 9/27/2018 at 8:45 PM, mcbpete said:

NTS is the Twin Peaks Season 3 of Autechre.

 

so... something boring I'd never watch? 

The state of your pond Stephen if you got hold of the 12'' box set ....

lol I bought the vinyl box set 

Its too nice for the pond =)

I do like a few tracks but agree with the OP in here. xflood is really good. 

I enjoyed it. Made a playlist of the tracks I liked and it came to 3 hours. Was surprised it came to that. That's a massive musical accomplishment in my book.

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I enjoyed it. Made a playlist of the tracks I liked and it came to 8 hours! :)

As a radio broadcast, perhaps the tracks were designed to be more accessible. I’m not convinced that the majority of the tracks are not “remixes” (someone posted the list of hybrids a while back after initial broadcast). Interesting to juxtapose the overall accessibility of NTS with the difficulty of their recent live sets. Finally: NTS2=

  On 9/24/2018 at 7:54 PM, telefunken said:

When release has tracks like elyc9 7hres, vekoS, acdwn2, tankakern and so on it can't be worst. IMO it shows some kind of healthy attitude.

Are you kidding me?  I love all of those tracks except elyc9 7hres

@OP: IDK, but tt1pd is Shanna and Bobs biggest achievement yet.

And as a bonus, community moments while streaming/releases happened were fun. Better moments than the births of our first born sons.

Really dig t1a1 and debris_funk from Session 1. Just a different way of listening than their other albums, like it better actually 

It's not just the worst AE release in a while, it's the most convoluted meandering release of theirs ever. =)

Sorry, trying to satisfy my monthly accurate but shitpost quota.

  On 11/25/2018 at 3:58 AM, Bulk VanderHooj said:

...it's the most convoluted meandering release of theirs ever. =)

 

You say that like it is a bad thing...

  On 11/25/2018 at 3:58 AM, Bulk VanderHooj said:

It's not just the best AE release in a while, it's the most convoluted meandering release of theirs ever. =)

well said!

  On 9/27/2018 at 9:07 PM, cebec said:

 

  On 9/27/2018 at 8:45 PM, mcbpete said:

NTS is the Twin Peaks Season 3 of Autechre.

 

 

Monica Bellucci... hnnng   

But yeah, NTS can be a lot to absorb, but it's far from their worst.

prob my least listened to record(s) this year but also my favorite and the most exciting release of the year, a treasure

These are SESSIONS, my dudes. The majority of the core sound sources are Quaristice & Exai material, & while they're clearly not as laid-back, preparation-free as, like, Rob's DJ sets, they're also pretty clearly mostly live "triggers 'n' tweaks" sessions, likely with beer/spliffs foaming/fuming throughout. So, yeah, some bits kinda drag (maybe while somebody's taking a drag), but such is the nature of the easygoing beast.

I guess the tracks I dig least are mostly predominantly percussive ones, though there are some bangers on here as someone said. The drone ones are nearly all stellar (although "the end" is a little melodramatic for my taste). Maybe the best thing about the eNTS is I can actually imagine the fellas enjoying themselves, rather than sitting in silence with their backs to each other sending files back & forth between terminals or stealth-browsing WATMM while they wait for some granular synthesis tweak to finish compiling.

i think it should've been 4 hours longer. 

  On 11/25/2018 at 8:28 AM, ignatius said:

i think it should've been 4 hours longer.

  On 11/25/2018 at 8:45 AM, hello spiral said:

 

  On 11/25/2018 at 8:28 AM, ignatius said:

i think it should've been 4 hours longer.

 

: )

Ok 4 tt1pd 1more hour

2 hour live set extrapolated from pedo riddim, yes pls.

Someone said earlier about AE_LIVE, elseq, and NTS representing a body of work or a way of thinking in regards to process and how they release content.  I completely agree.  I guess one could argue Exai was their last "canon" release of "songs," but I dont know how to feel about that.  There are several moments post-Exai that I genuinely love, but I do miss putting on a new Autechre release and appreciating all its content in an encapsulated experience.  With NTS especially, some of the stuff is just throw away for me – I just skip it all together. I dont want to have to make a playlist of the songs I like. I want the whole album to be on point and at this scope (elseq included), its just not. I'm with coax on this one... It's so overwhelming it gets distilled and songs seem more like experiments where they are reacting midflight to their process, rather than actual compositions built on some weird framework of their making.  It's all really interesting in theory and I love the idea, but I'm not so sure if the juice is entirely worth the squeeze (unless of course I filter the juice in a playlist).  Then again, they're not making music for ME so by all means keeping pushing the boundaries.  Either way I'm along for the ride.

A final thought...

I feel like track length may be working against NTS.  MANY of these songs suffer from over extension. You can literally click anywhere in the timeline and get nearly the same results, which to me suggests these "tracks" are more like imprints or castings of a single idea and not a "song" per se.  To extend the art analogy, its like Incunabula/Amber/Tri Repetae were purposeful and representational paintings with clear intent on capturing a scene.  Chiastic slide thru EP7, LP5, and up to Draft broke down how we perceive a scene – becoming more Cubist and Deconstructionist.  Untilted/Quaristice added physicality to the process and also opened up the idea of versioning, bringing into question the reproduced track/object, all of which echoes some of the questions being asked in pop art of the 60's-80's. Warhol, Steimbach, Koons et al.  Oversteps/Exai, was a weird deviation back into computer audio (read: not Elektrons) which somehow falls into self reflection, surrealism, and atmospherics. Here they are using all their previous tropes, breaking them down and building them back up. Lastly their current work really mirrors the height of Modernity and high conceptualism.  What is painting?  What is a song?  What is the nature of perception?  The tracks capture the topology of the process where the palette is chosen, but the strokes are undetermined – like a Pollock painting or a color field abstraction.

This is super interesting and highly conceptual, but I gotta be honest... if you see one Jackson Pollock painting, you've sorta seen them all.

Yes exactly.